The Heathen Home

One of the most challenging tasks when desiring to start your own business......IS TO START. There are many out there who need the extra income from a business, still others that no longer desire to work for anyone else and then finally those who just need an income of any kind! The ideas come, plans are laid out, research done, products and resources are located and then comes the real task...launching out. Somewhere in the process fear rises up. Will the business succeed? Will anyone buy the products? Is this all just a pipe dream? Everyone deals with those little nagging doubts....EVERYONE. It is how we deal with those voices that will set the course for success or failure. While everyone is familiar with the fear of failure, not everyone has given much attention to the fear of success. You see if the business launches, is successful and grows then more responsibility, larger resources and more people become dependant upon your success. The way to overcome this specific type of fear is to build slow and steady. Think of building a house. First the foundation is dug, the foundation walls put in place and all the ground utilities brought in or a way made to let them flow out. Everything done in the beginning stages of building a home sets the foundation for the building of the rest of the structure. Start by building a strong foundation. Make sure that you have strong, reliable suppliers, strong accounting practices and strong process for creating what you want to sell. When the time comes for growth, everything will be in place for expansion and building and will relieve some of the stress and pain of growth.

The other part of the success equation comes from you. If you believe you can you will. If you believe it is only possible to have limited success you will. If you believe that you might start off well but eventually fail, you will. You get to choose. One of the fundamental tasks of any leader, from president to parent, is to give people a sense of confidence: in themselves, in the group of which they are a part, and in the mission itself. A leader must have faith in the people he or she leads, and inspire that faith in them. As Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School writes in her book Confidence, “Leadership is not about the leader, it is about how he or she builds the confidence of everyone else.”4 Confidence, by the way, is Latin for “having faith together.”Harvard economic historian David Landes, in his The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, explores the question of why some countries fail to grow economically while others succeed spectacularly. After more than 500 pages of close analysis, he reaches this conclusion:In this world, the optimists have it, not because they are always right, but because they are positive. Even when wrong, they are positive, and that is the way of achievement, correction, improvement, and success. Educated, eyes-open optimism pays; pessimism can only offer the empty consolation of being right.5